Hindi movie DVD authoring

I've just finished authoring the DVD for a movie called 'Don' starring Shahrukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Isha Koppikar and Directed by Farhan Akhtar. The DVD is set to be released in the US in the first week of Dec, and a bit later in other parts of the world. An Indian version will release some weeks from now.

I used Apple DVD Studio Pro for the entire job and Final Cut Pro for the slight editing, sound syncing and other video processes. Its not all finished yet, but there were quite some learnings from this.

For one thing, Hindi movies are usually 170-190 mins in duration. Compared to most English movies which are between 90 and 130 mins. So the compression used is much greater. And the picture gets coarser. Further most post houses do a telecine to video for the DVD. This sometimes adds a small shake in the picture and that too adds to the quality hit since the compressor has to work harder.

And NTSC. For some reason all Hindi films have to be released in NTSC. So the PAL - NTSC or 24fps - NTSC conversion adds a further hit to the picture quality with the added interpolated frames.

For Don I made the DVD for from the original digital files that were created after DI and used to write to film for the final negative. So I had none of these problems. And the resulting picture looks definitely cleaner and sharper - no dirt, scratches and hair. And the colours are exactly what the Cinematographer and colourist set while grading the film.

The process is much slower however. Telecine could have been done in about half a day while this conversion can take many days of rendering. But the sheer quality gain makes it worth while. I believe Don is the first Hindi movie DVD to be made this way.

On DVDs. The structure of a DVD is governed by a DVD specification laid down many years ago. A lot of the visual effects that we're used to seeing on TV are simply not permissible on a DVD. Soft shadows, fast moving intros, transitions all are complex images that tend to break up into compression 'blockies' unless one is really careful.

A 'normal' DVD also called DVD-9 can hold about 8.5 Gb. This amounts to about 8200 Mb numerically. The data is spread over two layers both on the same side. So layer 0 is the bottom layer written from the inside to the outside. When the laser reaches the outermost edge it switched layers and starts reading inwards. This layer switch has to be at the same place on the DVD. Which means that layer 0 cannor be smaller than layer 1.

And there is a small pause between layers which depends on your player's ability to switch focus. Naturally the best point to place this break is at the interval. But for that the first half has to be longer than the second half. If your movie has a longer second half you have to make a break somewhere after the interval.

Add to this the fact that the company that markets the DVD add so many ads, trailers and promos that its not unusual to have to sit through 5-8 mins of promotionals before one gets to see the movie. And none of this can be 'fast-forwarded'. This could get very irritating. In Don, I've made most of this stuff skippable.

Finally, colours. As most users will see the DVD on just about any TV set - from a 5 year old CRT to a new large plasma - its really had to make a picture that will look universally good. Especially in India where the average home has a rather poorly adjusted TV set.

This is not the same challenge as telecast, Because in telecast at least the system sending out the signal is common and of good quality. Whereas in DVD, the source - a DVD player - is individual and different in every home. So its impossible to preview a DVD as it would appear in 'the average home'. For Don, I set my judgement to an 'average' DVD player, and a 'standard' broadcast monitor. And did a second check at home on a rather well calibrated 5 year old TV set.

But overall, this is not a very heartening experience. Add to this the fact that the authoring and QC process can take almost a week to 10 days and is not billed for as an additional service makes this a not very encouraging job. But some day I hope to be able to use these learnings in making DVD authoring a moe valued job function.

Digital Cinema - still needs film

Yes Digital Cinema, DCinema, still needs film to get going.

I'm just wrapping up the DI (digital intermediate) for a major Hindi feature film. And they will release that film worldwide with about 800 film prints. Besides, one DCinema company will release the film digitally at hundreds of theatres all over India.

There's still a month for release, so I got into some testing with the Digital Cinema release company. It turns out they work like this...

1. Producer hands over a final negative. And Dolby sound tracks (on Hi-8 or some other medium)
2. They telecine the negative to D-5. Meaning 1:7 compression depending on how they do it.
3. Format is 1080p25. So film is run at 24+1 in telecine. Motion artifacts? Need to see this.
4. They capture this D-5 into their system. Its a PC so maybe they use something like Premiere.
5. Marry the Picture and sound and compress/encrypt.
6. Final MPEG-4 is distributed over satellite or removable hard disks.

The producer gets to pay a fixed sum for the telecine. So maybe they've got a good deal with someone with an old CRT telecine somewhere.

I got into this and offered to give them the movie digitally since we're grading on Lustre. And I have the means (and a good reason) to convert these through our look-up tables into a format of their choice. They chose QuickTime Uncompressed. I made a small 2 min sample (really huge and great looking file).

First we went into a back and forth because their cheap USB drives simply couldn't transfer this without errors. I offered Firewire hard disks at my expense.

After about 10 days they came back and said their method (neg to D-5 to compressed) produced identical results to my digital to digital suggestion.

Look at the chain in the method they follow...

1. Film originally shot on 35 mm film.
2. 35 mm film scanned to hard disk.
3. Graded on Lustre. Digital processing. Mostly lossless.
4. Digital files output to film. Some loss here from the original.
5. Processed film telecine'd. Colour correction and some motion artifacts.
6. Compression on tape. D-5, 4:1 or 7:1
7. Tape captured to disk. Decompression from tape for HD-SDI and further compression in capture hardware.
8. Compression to MPEG4 for transmission. More compression.

Sure they say this looks good. And sure hundreds of theatres have shown this to thousands of people. And sure most people won't tell the difference anyway. But hey, why don't we shoot VHS and distribute VCD? Most people can't tell between that and Betacam anyway right?

I'm running out of patience. So the end result is that this film will be released digitally but with the help of film.

HDV in Quantel eQ, Autodesk Smoke, Flame, Lustre

HDV is to 'mainstream HD' what DV is to SD. A small, compressed, reasonable quality low-cost medium that brings tools of movie-making and general videography to the masses. And its not just weddings, birthdays, anniversaries that will be shot with HDV. TV shows, commercials and as I wrote last week, even full-length movies are being shot and will continue to be shot on HDV.

Almost anyone who's seen HDV will agree that it is no match for 35mm or even HD. But that won't stop anyone from using it. The lure of the medium and the promises are too much and most anyone will at least give it one try.

With HDV, after the shoot is over, the challenge of editing and finishing is a whole new enterprise. The so-called 'offline' systems like Avid XPress, Liquid, Final Cut Pro, Vegas, Premiere and others all can capture HDV directly from a camcorder/deck. But clients don't want to work on these systems alone. They want to finish their films on the so-called 'online' systems like Autodesk Smoke, Flame, Quantel eQ and even iQ. For colour correction, keying, stabilization, whatever.

But none of these can directly capture from HDV camcorder/decks. Unless one uses special converters and decks. Later this month I will be using a Miranda HDV bridge that converts HDV to HD-SDI and even sports RS-422 deck control. So with this and a HDV deck one will be able to capture to any of these online systems from HDV decks. As uncompressed HD.

Last night I completed a workflow where a client shot a commercial on HDV, captured to his FCP station as HDV 1080i50 (thats HDV native) and edited it. He then gave his rushes as one Quicktime movie and an EDL to conform it.

The rushes were one long 4o min Quicktime movie with the HDV 1080I50. Opening this in Autodesk Smoke/Flame/Lustre is out of the question. Those systems don't open these 'consumer' formats. So I took it to a Quantel eQ (new, ver 3.5 1.14 or something like that). This system can open Quicktime movies.

But even that couldn't do it. One issue is that Quantel systems (which are WinXP PCs) run Quicktime 6 and not later. And Quantel doesn't recommend Quicktime 7. Even if they did, HDV and Apple Intermediate codec doesn't work on QT Windows any version.

So I had to export the HDV 1080i50 movie to Uncompresssed Quicktime 1080i50. I did that using Compressor. Now the original 7 Gb file became 225 Gb. Just 40 mins of rushes. So thats another thing to think about when capturing from HDV to Smoke/Flame or eQ/iQ. Through the HDV bridge as HD-SDI, HDV quickly fills up hard disk space.

Even after exporting as Uncompressed HD, eQ couldn't really play it smoothly. Some field/frame rate issue cropped up. So the eQ artist had to do something like render it out so it could play smoothly. And incidentally, the conversion stripped the original HDV movie of its time code so the point of this excercise to conform rushes was lost. Hmmm.

Eventually we opened the conformed film in FCP, exported that out as one 30 sec QT, then manually extended all clips by one min head and tail and exported that 'spread out' edit. Converted both these to Uncompressed QT and sent that to eQ. So they would have handles there. What a drag.

So bottom line. If you're shooting HDV...
1. Check out the video quality against other mediums like DVCProHD, HDCam, HDCamSR, even DigiBeta.
2. Capture and edit on an 'offline' system.
3. Master back to SD DigiBeta or HD or whatever on the 'offline' system itself.
4. If there are shots needing work on an online system, then export them Uncompressed Quicktime, or DPX, separately.
5. Take the whole film as another large Uncompressed Quicktime, or DPX.
6. Work on the shots needing work and then assemble them with the full film in the 'online' system.
7. Master out of the 'online' system.

But there's still work needed. Some more research and trial and error before one can recommend this workflow. And for a film going out to 35mm? Will check that out soon.

And if you're looking at doing HDV, do take a good look at Sony Z1 alternatives like the Canon XL-H1, JVC GY HD-100 even Panasonic HVX-200. You might be surprised.

HDV to film

Yes, you read right. Shoot on HDV, grade and record out to film for showing in theatres. I've just concluded one such assignment. My role was to supervise the conversions from HDV to a form suitable for grading. The film was shot on a HDV camcorder. Then graded on a Lustre while monitoring on a large-screen projection. Some compositing required was done on Flame and Shake and in a few days from now we'll output to 35 mm film.

I'll have more workflow details as soon as I see results in a theatre and, of course, seek the producer's permission to write publicly about this.

Film and DPI

How many dpi is 35mm movie film?

A film maker friend asked for stills scanned from his 35mm original movie film frames. For publicity. And the agency wanted 300 dpi. My million-dollar Spirit scanner does 4k. So it scans a 35mm frame in a size 2048x1556 or 4096x3112. So how many dpi is that?

I set about thinking. First off, dpi is dots per inch. It is a measure for printed material. As in printed on paper. Inkjet printers do 600 or more dpi. So whether you hold the printout an inch from your nose ot at arm's length there's still 600 dots in one inch. But film? How many dpi?

When working in Photoshop one often encounters a figure of 72 dpi for TV. That is arrived at by assuming a 14" TV set. Such a set shows a picture about 13" diagonal. Which by using Pythagoras gives you about 10.6 by 8 in. For a PAL 720x576 picture that's about 72 dpi. So TV is 72 dpi for a 14" TV set. For a 20" set it is 48 dpi and a 29" TV shows just 33 dpi.

So basically for non-print images dpi is not fixed, but varies by the size of the medium. So how about film? Better than 72 dpi? Can we get some 300 dpi please?

Here's my take and I may not be entirely correct. Here goes anyway...

35mm film scanners for movie production scan at 2048x1556 pixels (at 2k) or 4096x3112 pixels (at 4k). At 2k (2048x1556) a standard 35mm frame of 18x24 mm is about 2200 dpi on the film. At 4096x3112 you've got about 4400 dpi. Impressive, but noone watches film on film. They watch it projected on a screen in a theatre.

In a theatre the same 35mm frame gets blown up to a giant screen of, say, 20 feet across. Now since the number of pixels remain unchanged you have a picture 2048 pixels by 1556 pixels. At 20 feet across, that's just over 8 dpi. Even a scan of 4096x3112 (4k) yields only 17 dpi. Appalling!

But hey, you watch that screen from 50 feet away. So you're not going to see it as 8 dpi. Its like they print magazines at 300 dpi, but the same ads in a magazine are printed on hoardings not at 300 dpi, but much less, like 10 dpi or something.

So dpi is a measure for fixed size printed matter. Which can be viewed at varying distances even very close. But film and TV are not fixed and can be viewed in various sizes and distances. But never too close. So dpi doesn't apply to film at all.

16mm vs HD for DI

Hardly a week passes when a prospective producer/director/DP calls and gets into a discussion on HD as a medium for film shooting. Resolutions, latitudes, sharpness, examples, dos and donts follow and the discussion always ends with the usual - "Sure its like film but..."

I spend a lot of time looking at digital film images. I work with a post setup in Mumbai which is the only one of its kind that has a 'near-2k' (soon to be full 4k) digital cinema projector. And this projector Is not your standard 'Powerpoint' projector, but a high resolution, Cinema-quality projector.
The point is, if you aren't looking at theatrical release bound images in a theatrical environment, you're always going to be surprised when it goes out to film eventually.

While debating the merits and demerits of shooting HD for theatrical release, many fall for the hard-sell of compressed 1280x720 HD formats. And some dabble with the latest compressed 1080 interlaced HDV.

But I have still to meet someone who even considers 1080p HD uncompressed - the only format that truly approaches film. But even 1080p uncompressed comes nowhere close to the sheer joy of a true 35 mm picture shot with a prime lens. Well graded and put out to 35mm. Nothing at all.

Sadly enough, budgets needed to film and finish in 35mm film are getting harder to find. And with 'let's do DI' mantra, nearly any of the benefits of shooting 35 are harder to sell. So HD seems extremely attractive alternative to 35mm flim.

Wait a minute. How about 16mm? It's film after all. The camera is small and quiet and doesn't need the complicated setup of HD cameras. Most DOPs are comfortable with the basic methodology of shooting 16 so they can concentrate on crafting great-looking shots instead of wading through menus and sub-menus looking for a setting to change something. Or fiddle with tiny controls and do colour tweaks that are easier to achieve in post. And while shooting HD, without a good calibrated monitor on set you just can't judge how your blacks are going to really look (and this is NOT racial).

And if you're doing DI scanning 16mm at 2k is as good as scanning 35mm at 4k. Yes sure, think about it. If your scanner - Spirit4k or Arriscan - scans the entire 16mm image area at 2k, its going to resolve as much detail as a 4k scan would see in a 35mm image area.

16mm stock is also cheaper by a third. 400 foot magazines run 11 mins so you're good to go for long scenes and multiple takes. Especially in songs.

Earlier this year, Arri introduced a new 16mm camera. The Arriflex 416. I've seen the 416 at an exhibition. Seems like everything a cinematographer would want in a movie camera. It does super16 so a naturally 16:9 frame aspect. Arri has done a great job of describing the camera as well as pointing out benefits in a digital world so I won't repeat it. Just head over to...

http://www.arri.com/entry/416.htm

So the pros of shooting 16mm over not shooting film at all would be...
1. Small light cable-free camera.
2. Easy to use, imager (stock) well understood.
3. Clean sharp optical viewfinder.
4. High resolution nearly indestructive original (film, lasts a century)
5. Future progress in conversion can yield better results. HD will never increase latitude/resolution regardless of future processing.
6. Stock (film) less volatile than tape, Cannot be erased.
7. Gorgeous high resolution exhibition master (film print, in film projector, in theatre), as opposed to small screen TV viewing or unpredictable video projection.

And the pros of doing HD would be...
1. Video tape, instant gratification. No processing.
2. Economical stock, so "keep rolling", and "let's do another take" possible incessantly.
3. Interview based or extempore performances can be accomodated.
4. With good on set monitor, exact post-shoot look can be visualized.
5. On-set adjustments possible with near-post like creative possibilities.
6. Sound and picture on same stock means less hassles in post.
7. Multi-camera shooting feasible so shoot time can be optimized.
8. Medium is digital anyway so integrating with graphic elements better.

Bottom line... think for yourself, your project and its needs. 35mm and HD don't even compare. But 16mm and HD make film thinkable as an option. And even if you still select HD you don't need to feel bad as long as you don't go near compressed tape formats. In that case please do 16mm.

SAN and NAS - basically shared storage

Shared storage here refers to computer storage or hard disks.

Anyone doing film effects or film finishing knows that as the number of people working together on a project increases, copying from one computer to another is no longer very convenient. So one needs to keep data in one place and share it among different users accross the network.

There two kinds of shared data arrangements in use now - SAN and NAS. Plenty of definitions exist for these terms. I like to think of it like this. SAN is a network of storage and users. NAS is a storage attached to an existing network.

SANs consist of computers with high speed fibre channel cards installed. These connect to a fibre channel switch. The shared storage - SAN - ia also connected to this switch. And there is a server computer also attached to this switch that just directs what goes where. Hence, Storage Area Network - SAN.

This 'switch' is like a hub interconnecting on demand, all computers connected to it. And transmitting data from whoever asks for it, to who needs it.

SANs allow extremely high speeds of data to be transferred simultaneously accross computers connected to the switch. It is possible to have a SAN that can allow up to 4 computers play full reesolution film sequences (each about 300 MBytes/sec). On the flip side SANs are problematic to upgrade either in capacity or the number of users. And even the number of users handled needs to be small - like 4-8. And, of course, SANs are also very expensive.

NASs on the other hand consist of a bunch of disks attached to server computer which is attached to a normal Ethernet network switch. A normal Gigait switch. The switch also connects to all computers around. Any computer needing data accesses the server which fetches the data and hands it out.

Expanding a NAS is comparatively easy with disks just being added. Expanding the users is as simple as plugging the user into the Ethernet switch. NAS boxes are comparatively cheap. Some are so economical that they just connect to the network and one can attach any drive to them. Like a converter.

But NAS is not as fast because it works on a network at network speeds. And is subject to network conditions. Even with GigE, on a busy network you get speeds no better than 60 MB/sec. Means 1 Gb copied in 15 sec. With some switches under some conditions you can even go up to 80 or 90 MB/sec. But no more than that. Surely a problem for anything over standard video resolution.

The interconnecting electronics in a SAN is Fibre Channel. At the current state, each Fibre Channel can handle 4 Gbps - or about 500 MBytes/sec max. With multiple simultaneous channels, this figure increases.

The interconnecting electronics in a NAS is Ethernet. At the current state, each Ethernet port can handle 1 Gbps - or about 125 MBytes/sec max. In less than a year, there will be 10 GigE which means each Ethernet port will handle 1250 MBytes/sec.

Who knows, by then, NAS speeds would equal or better today's SAN speeds.

My own Avid Media Composer... finally!

For a lot of us editors- and I'm not going to call us 'offline' we're editors - the ultimate editing machine is definitely an Avid. And when we say 'an Avid' we mostly mean a Media Composer. Not some watered down XPress or XPressDV or something like that. Though in the past 2-3 years the low-end Avids like XPress and XPRessDV have gotten pretty close to Media Composers in features.

But still a full-blown Avid Media Composer has always been something that someone else owned and we rented. At anything between Rs. 20-30 lakhs (Rupees 2-3 million), it has definitely been out of reach for most. I mean, you can get a rather good flat at Andheri for that kind of money. Or buy two luxury cars even.

So if any of us ever owned an editing system it usually was an FCP on a PowerBook or maybe a pirated copy of XPress on a cheap PC laptop. I must say though, that almost all the editors who I've seen get a PC and a pirated Avid XPress didn't eventually do much editing on it. The FCP-PowerBook people fared slightly better.

But now, finally many of us can actually afford our very own Media Composer. At NAB last month Avid announced that the software-only version of Avid Media Composer would soon be available for US$ 5,000 (About Rs. 2.5 lakhs with some taxes). Sounds like a lot of money still, but hey, it is a Media Composer. No excuses. It can do DV, all resolutions to 1:1, multi-track, multi-cam, film, anything a Media Composer can.

To be able to capture from Beta/Digi, you can buy the new Avid Mojo SDI for US$ 2,700 (About Rs. 1.8 lakhs with some duties and taxes). You'll need some fast storage for that, though. Mojo SDI has SDI, component analog, composite, S-video, AES and analog audio, all in and out.

So any of us can now finally own an Avid Media Composer. For about 2.5+1.8 lakhs=Rs 4.3 lakhs plus the cost of a good Mac or PC and some fast storage. A real Media Composer, a brand new one, that can open any old project even open old Meridien media.

And a dream system would be, a new Apple Mac G5 Quad, Avid Media Composer Software, Avid Mojo SDI, and some fast storage and a good monitor and speakers. Under Rs 8 lakhs. Add a bit more and maybe you can even run FCP on it. Of course you can get a PC instead of a Mac, but then you can't run FCP on a PC.

And by the way, this Avid Media Composer ships for PC as well as Mac in the same box. You can use either PC or Mac. No need to commit yourself to Mac or PC. Even have both and run it on either, one at a time.

One slight snafu is that this Media Composer will not run on the newest Intel Macs - The MacBook Pro, the iMac , or the MacMini. But Avid will be out with a Universal Binary version of Avid Media Composer in a few months, maybe end of the year.

And then, if the new Intel desktop Macs are available who knows... you can even get a Mac that runs Avid Media Composer, and FCP on a Mac partition and also boots in Windows in another partition so you can run Avid Media Composer, and other PC apps on the Windows partition, even play PC-only games. Mac and PC, Avid and FCP in one box. Now how about that?

8k Camera, 8k Projector, 8k Digital Cinema.

I visited NAB at Las Vegas this year. 24th to 27th Apr 06. Some of the biggest companies in broadcast, post production, audio, video and other film/video related disciplines exhibit there. For us Post guys, there's Discreet, Apple, Adobe, Avid, Sony, Panasonic, Thomson, Cintel, DaVinci and loads of others. Great if you're a techie or even if you're somehow connected to this business.

At one corner of the exhibition in the Central hall, just behind the LED lite panels, was an interesting display.

An 8k presentation. This was by NHK, the Japanese broadcasting company. A projection, at 8k. Yes 8k. Not 2k, not 4k, but honest to God 8k. There were two projectors. Something like one showing red/green and one doing blue. Both 8k. Maybe a Sony special edition by the looks of it.

There were shots of New York, Japan and other places. All on a large screen. And all the footage shown had been shot on 8k, digitally, and projected with music to match with an 8k projection.

Outside there was also the camera that shot it all. And the high speed storage, compression and transmission systems. These are installed at some museums and other such institutions in Japan.

Mind you, this is not some prototype, releasing in some summer or fall or spring. It is for real. Not that you can go out and buy any of this, but you can see and enjoy the results nevertheless.

And since none of the stuff shown seemed to be originated on film, one wonders... what if it had been? I doubt if film, scanned as 8k and then shown on that gigantic screen would have the clean sharp - maybe what some might call a 'digital look' - that these images showed.

If anyone is concerned about the done to death proclamation, 'Film is dead' then after seeing this 8k demo, I can assure you that neither HD nor even 2k film DI will kill off film. No sir, as long as you shoot film, you are bound by its limits. And yes these limits are for all to see when one sees an 8k DCinema demo.

Sort of like if one were to shoot on still 35 mm film and use the best possible scanner to get a high resolution image vis a vis shooting with the best possible digital still camera. Not too many will disagree that digital still cameras have more or less done away with film cameras.

By simply surpassing 35 mm film not trying to imitate them. I believe now that movie film will also be done for, by exceptional quality digital cinema cameras. But at the present time there's probably not one single camera that can honestly do that as easily as a film camera can. But it will be there surely in the next 1-3 years.

And oh yes. Just outside the theatre, was showing was a large 3D HD projection. Using cross polaroids. And a 3D display on LCD TVs as well. Both awesome. HD in 3D. What an amazing way to view it. SD in 3D probably would be a strain to watch because of the low res, but HD3D is something else.

The new iMac. First-hand info.

I've just got my new iMac. Its 1.83 GHz, Dual core Intel with 512 Mb RAM and a 160 Gb hard disc.
You take it out of the box, connect power, keyboard and mouse, turn it on and it starts up. Everything is already installed, you just need to put in your name and other details and it starts.

I had already downloaded Boot Camp and the drivers for Windows. And had a WinXP DVD ready. So the first thing I did was to install Windows - on my Mac.

I set aside a 32 Gb partition. The WindowsXP installation took about an hour. Then I went on to install an anti-virus and anti-spyware software. AVGFree and SpyBotSD. Then Quicktime, and Adobe Acrobat. All this took another hour. O still have to put Winzip and other stuff.

But the windows 'side' works just like a PC. I could use USB sticks, listen to music, watch DVDs burn CDs - everything. And pretty snappy too.

Anyway, why exactly did I install Windows on my Mac? The main reason was to be able to browse on certain sites that are just not Mac-friendly yet. For instance. The Indian Railways reservation site, that simply doesn't go past the password screen. And you can't book tickets on. The HDFC bank site that doesn't show icons. The Indiatimes briefcase and e-mail site. And lots more that simply don't work fine with Safari. And there's no one to complain about.

Most sys admins and webmasters at these sites aren't even aware that the Mac has a different operating system When you call or write, their replies usually start with a "Go to your start menu, select Control panel and...". Even if you interject and say you have a Mac, they simply continue "Yes I know, just go to your start menu, select Control panel and..."

Actually, come to think of it, I once showed a movie on my PowerBook to this young MBA from IIM who had also studied Computer and Software Engineering and was working as a software person in NY. And her reaction was... "No start menu and the menu always stays on, where did you get this theme?". She thought it was a clever question till I told her I was running Unix with a proprietary GUI. And she shook her head as though I was just masquerading a good looking Linux build. But she had no clue about the fact that this was the classic MacOSX interface for nearly half a decade.

Now one doesn't have to face all this anymore. If it doesn't work on your Mac, and the world doesn't understand, just try it on your Mac - with Windows this time.